Rootkit
by Asho
Summary: A collection of short stories focusing on a pair you could call "mortal enemies". Could be seen as AU and OOC, if it helps you sleep at night.
1. Startup

**Disclaimer: This work of fiction is made for fun and without profit. The author claims no ownership over any part of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise.**

Monday.

The sun rose over Nishinomiya, signaling the start of yet another week of work. All across the city, multitudes of students struggled to get out of bed and prepare for the day ahead. This was not the case with Nagato Yuki, who was walking out of her door at the time she always did.

There were no clouds in the sky, the temperature was 26°C and a soft breeze was blowing by. Many would call this a beautiful day, but Yuki simply perceived it as a lack of anomalies in the environment.

Upon arriving at North High, she made her ways towards the Literature Club room. After entering, she sat on her chair and started reading a heavy looking book. Once a certain amount of time had passed, she got up and headed for homeroom.

Yuki arrived at the classroom precisely five minutes before the bell rang. She noted how everybody inside was gossiping about a supposed transfer student that would be arriving that day. She paid no mind; if it was of any importance, she would know beforehand.

Continuing with her book once she had occupied her seat, she kept herself engrossed in it, even as the teacher entered the room.

"Good morning, class. As you've surely heard already, we have a transfer student who will be joining us starting today. I want you to be polite to her and make sure she feels comfortable among us." He made a gesture towards the door. "You can come in now."

Yuki lifted her eyes up for a quick analysis of this student. However, the moment she did, she immediately put down her book. If Kyon was present, his narration would probably note how her eyes seemed to slightly widen and how her mouth appeared to be in an 'O' shape.

She was in conflict. A part of her was disregarding her original programming and insisting that the events occurring before her eyes were simply not real, illogical as that would be. An odd sensation was coursing through her. She didn't know what it was, but if asked to pick something from any of the books she had read, it would be "heart gripped by fear".

For the first time in her short life, Yuki was at a total loss as for what to do.

"Please introduce yourself", said the teacher.

An awkward silence.

""__________My name____________Kuyoh_______Suou_____"

Another awkward silence.

"Ahem."The teacher cleared his throat and looked at the class. "Let's see… You can sit behind Nagato while we sort things out", he said as he pointed towards the empty seat behind Yuki.

For the first time in her life, yet again, Yuki had the urge to "raise an objection".

Instead, she simply dropped her head on her desk.

* * *

Years with this account, and this is the first thing I ever post. Oh wow.

Awfully short and Yuki is kinda OOC. But hey, I'd be pretty wary of the only person capable of KOing me.

Read and review, because I'm sure there's more than one flaw in there.


	2. Backup

**Disclaimer: This work of fiction is made for fun and without profit. The author claims no ownership over any part of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise.**

Over the last few days, Yuki had become acquainted with a little feeling named "anxiety". While unconfirmed, the most likely cause would be the fact that Kuyoh had been pretty much stalking her all over. On her way to school, during class and even during Brigade meetings, she was always behind her.

To make matters worse, no matter how many scans Yuki ran, she could never get a single bit of data on Kuyoh. No previous data on behavioral patterns, no thought processes, no reasons why in the universe she was following her, no nothing. She couldn't even tell if the insides of her humanoid body had any resemblance whatsoever with those of a regular human.

Haruhi Suzumiya didn't seem bothered by her presence. Maybe she _did_ have the habit of making herself invisible. Yet, not being able to obtain confirmation in regards to that statement only served to put Yuki on an even higher state of alert.

Eventually, she decided that help was required. Informing the Data Overmind was out of the question; Yuki's anxiety could be seen as a critical error, and risking deletion was _not_ something she was up to, Kyon being Kyon or not. But there was still someone of her own kind that she was sure she could trust.

"I see." Emiri Kimidori put down the cup of tea she was drinking while Yuki was telling her story. "The way I see it, any drastic action taken by Miss Kuyoh would cause a rather major disturbance in data flow. If any of us was in danger, backup would surely arrive." Kimidori's words seemed to put Yuki at ease.

"However, just as in your case, I cannot obtain any data pertaining to the Sky Canopy Dominion. There's no way either of us could know how many of their agents attend North High. Not to mention the response time of a unit in case decrypting a data space is required."

Yuki didn't sleep that night. Not that she ever needed to.

* * *

I got a bunch of ideas and decided to continue this. It's even shorter, but what can ya do.

Read and review! I've heard it's a good way for me to improve.


	3. Network

**Disclaimer: This work of fiction is made for fun and without profit. The author claims no ownership over any part of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise.**

The vast, black nothingness of space surrounded Yuki. The inherent calm of the void betrayed the urgency of the situation at hand, for the final battle was afoot.

Yuki stood still, waiting for the enemy to strike. Yet, she knew the inky-black mass that confronted her was doing the same.

She could not afford to make the slightest mistake. Whichever of the two struck first would be trampling all over the other's charred, disfigured remains.

The tension would easily overwhelm a regular human. Nothing but distant stars plastered across a canvas of what otherwise was empty space, along with the knowledge that it the end was coming.

Yuki started turning to her left and instantly shifted into a battle-ready stance. Right in front of her, Kuyoh was preparing to attack.

Yuki wouldn't let her.

As they both charged against each other, Yuki's thoughts were solely focused on the need to come out on top of the incomprehensible alien. And just before their attacks collided with their intended target…

Darkness.

"Oi! Yuki! Stop playing that stupid game and come with me!"

Yuki stared at the laptop screen, which was now turned off. Of course Haruhi would call _Day of Sagittarius_ a stupid game, and surely not because she lacked the brains for strategy warfare or anything of the sort.

Left with no choice, Haruhi dragged Yuki by her arm off to who-knows-where. Just as she was at the clubroom's door, she turned around with a slightly puzzled look on her face.

"Hey, didn't you attend Kouyouen? Why would you transfer here? This school kinda sucks."

Haruhi did not think about how she addressed Kuyoh in such a rude manner, but she did remember Sasaki. She hated her so much. Why or how, she didn't care; she just felt the impulse to swear her as one of her greatest enemies.

Regardless of that, her mind pulled a bit of a 180 and stated: "Well, if you're Yuki's friend, I guess you're not so bad."

For the other brigade members, it was obvious that such was not the case. In fact, they were wondering why Kuyoh was in the clubroom, and playing a game against Yuki at that.

The sci-fi loving alien wasn't sure herself; for some reason, she invited the black mass of hair for a game. After a couple defeats, Kuyoh got the hang of the game and put up quite a fight. Yuki did not want to be one-upped by someone who had been playing for far less time. Again, that was a puzzle in itself, as pride wasn't something interfaces were made with. Then again, an interface usually didn't collect over half a millennia of redundant data.

"I just got an awesome idea!" And with that, Haruhi took both aliens and rushed out. After a while, she came back, prey in tow. "Check this out!" Haruhi stepped aside with an over elaborated wave of her hand.

Yuki was standing in her usual stoic pose. However, she was wearing what was a witch costume in a gothic Lolita style. Said outfit was completely white. At her side, Kuyoh was sporting an almost identical wardrobe, the only difference being that it was black instead.

"Isn't my eye for fashion absolutely genius? And I must admit, both of you have a charm different from Mikuru's!"

Haruhi then stood behind her desk and triumphantly announced: "It's decided! We'll start working on the next installment of _The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina_!"

After a (dramatic in her mind) pause, she added: "_Yuki's Alien Dilemma_!"

Just as a headache was starting to act up, Kyon wondered if it was possible for Haruhi's hare-brained plots to eventually shift the titular battle waitress out of focus while maintaining her name in the title.

* * *

Lazyness and a bit of writer's block delayed this.

Originally, these were two separate ideas, but I merged them togheter since I didn't think I could get over a hundred words out of the second one.

Read and review! Shortness can't be my only problem.


	4. Registry

**Disclaimer: This work of fiction is made for purposes of entertainment and without profit. The author claims no ownership over any part of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise.**

* * *

Kyon couldn't believe his eyes.

Now, by this point, such a statement would normally be worrisome. However, the cause of his disbelief was not because the current situation was completely out of the ordinary, but because of how simply ludicrous it was.

In the past few days, the alien known as Suou Kuyoh had apparently begun some sort of plan, which started with gaining control of the mind of small animals. Yuki Nagato had concluded that it could potentially escalate up to the entirety of the city's human population, the world in the worst of cases. As such, she began to fight to stop whatever dark objectives the mysterious hivemind was up to.

That looks like a rather sound plot, doesn't it?

It wasn't as much the moment Ryouko Asakura suddenly returned once again, having been ordered to assist Yuki. Sure, their mission was actually just to find out exactly what was going on, but not taking action would surely only make things worse for everyone. Then again, having the blunette around, now for an extended period of time, made things worse for Kyon.

At least until she started humiliating herself at every turn. While the duo was going around in what seemed to be a wild goose chase in a series of increasingly zany situations, the consummate knife attacker kept making a fool out of herself in ways that felt natural to each scenario. If years of watching slapstick comedy in cartoons made you come up with some hilarious situation, it happened, just like clockwork. It even got to the point where everybody expected Yuki to come in the aid of her partner whenever it happened. Ryouko was still the best help the book-lover could have, though.

And now, the two were engaged in a fight with the perpetrator herself. It was unlike anything Kyon had ever seen before. Not only were Yuki and Ryouko attacking Kuyoh from two sides, they also teamed up for some over-elaborate and flashy tandem strikes. Most of those seemed to involve either humiliating or physically harming Ryouko, Kyon mentally noted.

When it came to the girl (no, monster) clad in a black uniform, he also noticed that she appeared to be telegraphing how she would attack and who would be her target. It couldn't be right. Leaning her head back for a hair tentacle while raising her arms before warping? A frustrated frown for purple and a silent glare for blue? That made no sense. None at all. And whenever she shifted battle plans (if she actually had them), good God, she'd pull off another one of those creepy uncanny valley smiles.

Finally, Kuyoh fell before the Overmind agents that had been sent to dispatch her. However, before they could attempt to capture and possibly interrogate her (or at the very least, contain her), she flipped into nonexistence before reappearing behind them. She muttered something under her breath, and both a significantly distraught Yuki and a very shocked Ryouko were shrunk to the point of near invisibility. Totally helpless, both interfaces were grabbed by Kuyoh and put on a golf tee, of all things. The mass of hair then materialized an accompanying club, and proceeded to take a swing at the makeshift ball, managing a shot that would make any pro weep like a baby.

Where did they land, nobody could tell.

* * *

Kyouko Tachibana was confident in her skills at maintaining her composure at any and all times. After all, she survived a face-off with the fearsome Mori, even if she was internally feeling like she was crumbling away. Why wouldn't she feel smug about that?

Said skills utterly failed her when Sasaki fainted, right after literally coughing up a certain pair of missing humanoid interfaces.

* * *

Hey, I'm not dead! Just being a hypocrite by leaving this alone and having the gall of being disappointed at dead fics.

The basic idea has been floating in my mind for a while, way before the spoilers for the tenth novel came out (though they did make me rephrase a couple sentences in this). It came mainly from a lot of fanart depicting the interfaces to include Ryouko always being outsmarted by Yuki, and what other series abuses the equally competent sidekick for laughs?

And that part at the end? It came to me in a dream. I should probably stop gaming before sleep.

Also, as of now I'm officially not pretending anymore that the chapter title has any relation to its contents.


End file.
